


Look Back At Us Now

by deandratb



Series: Affairs of State [5]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, it's really just an internal monologue run wild, so...enjoy?, this has zero plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 13:51:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13168284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: Josh reflects on the time he spent arguing with the voice in his head after Donna quit.She’s not his Donna anymore. She seems so self-assured, so polished...so happy. Without him.





	Look Back At Us Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subparauthorings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subparauthorings/gifts).



> Prompt: **Josh being super in love with Donna and a pining sad idiot**

Donna quitting gave Josh a few solid days of very focused brooding. The initial internal argument went something like:

_Donna quit. Donna **couldn’t** quit. She was his…well, she was **Donna.** Donna would never leave him. How could she have left him? Where would she even go?_

_She was gone. She wasn’t coming back._ He held a secret belief for at least a week that she’d come back, like the first time, but nobody needed to know that once it didn’t happen. This wasn’t like the first time.

Unfortunately, his brain started arguing with itself by the end of the first night he spent trying to comprehend the reality of the situation. What should have been a straightforward evening took on a life of its own.

Donna quit. _-Technically she resigned. Doris had the letter on her desk that proved it._

Donna couldn’t quit. _-Yes she could. It’s a miracle she lasted as long as she did, when you wouldn’t even give her a title bump._

She was his... _-She was your what? Go ahead, answer that one._

Well, she was Donna. _-Very smooth._

Donna would never leave him. _-Things change. People change. Even if you never do._

How could she have left him? _-She didn’t leave you. She went looking for a job with even a slim chance of advancement. Who wouldn’t leave a job with little pay and even less acknowledgement? What do you think she was, stupid?_

Where would she even go? _-Well, you won’t find out now, will you? You couldn’t even find the nerve to take a lunch meeting. You knew full well what she needed to talk to you about and it freaked you, and you brushed her off._

It always worked so well with everybody else. _-She wasn’t like everybody else--and that’s the real issue here, isn’t it?_

He got very drunk that night, passed out successfully without storming her apartment and begging her to come back, and pondered the irony: Donna left him, and he discovered he’d internalized her voice somewhere along the way.

It would have been a lot easier for him to justify that event being everyone’s fault **except** his if every defensive thought wasn’t rebutted by that voice that sounded so familiar.

She didn’t even give me the courtesy-- _-Oh, stop right there. She gave you every courtesy. You refused to listen. You kept treating her like that new kid from Wisconsin because you thought you’d lose her if you let her do more._

He missed her so much that first week. During the first campaign, he and Mandy had almost gotten married before their relationship combusted. They’d discussed eloping, not waiting for a ceremony because when would they ever have time for that and who needs an excuse for a party anyway, and where would they have it when she was firmly not Jewish and hated churches? They almost went for it one night in Pennsylvania after a lot of alcohol but something stopped them. _Sanity?_

She left a few weeks later, and it left a hole, despite how dysfunctional they’d been. But all he could think was that Mandy had nearly been his wife and he didn’t miss her half as much as he missed Donna.

He didn’t do the logical thing. Looking back, Donna leaving changed the course of his life. _She probably knew that would happen._

He recognized that he’d been an idiot, and he knew that if he went after her now he could get her back. If he was honest, if he explained why he did what he did, and that he understood why he did what he did– _if he left this second and he didn’t stop for red lights_ –and got to her before she moved on to whatever her idea of a better opportunity was, he could fix it.

That would have been the sensible response to the situation he found himself in.

Naturally, Josh Lyman flew to Texas. 

Maybe deep down he’d been thinking of convincing Santos to run for President, but he has no idea, to this day, if he would have done anything about it, if Donna hadn’t left the way she did. He wonders if he’ll thank her for it one day. _Doubtful._

When he finds out she’s working for Russell, it stings. He’s a man, he can admit it–he’s hurt by her decision. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t know he was going to work with Santos–it feels like a slap in the face to him, and to everything they worked for under President Bartlet. The second he heard, he wanted to call her up in her new office and ask, didn’t she recognize Russell for the phony he was?

_How could she have grown so much, learned so much since he met her taking over his office eight years ago, and not have learned that politics should be about finding a great man--not just a man who seems like a sure thing?_

Of course, he doesn’t call her. He hears about her new job, mostly from CJ, who watches him with those knowing eyes but doesn’t push, and he knows she hears about his, also probably from CJ, but he doesn’t speak to her and she doesn’t contact him.

When he sees her in Will’s office, he’s actually surprised. He has spent so much time focused on **not** thinking about her that he assumes he’s hallucinating for a second.

After exchanging hellos, he’s not sure which one of them is more uncomfortable, but every encounter on the campaign trail after that is roughly the same. 

She’s not his Donna anymore. She seems so self-assured, so polished...so happy. _Without him._

It takes everything he has not to say more, when she comes to him for a job. _God, he missed her so much that it’s physically painful to see her again. To imagine having her back at his side._

He almost does say more, when Lou brings her on, and puts them in a room together. He almost blurts out everything he **didn’t** say in the back of a cab and in Gaza and in a hotel hallway.

_Who knows what would’ve happened if they hadn’t gotten interrupted?_

Josh watches her walk away with Edie, room key in hand, and doesn’t have to wonder anymore. He knows what would’ve happened now. 

When his defenses are down, when they’re too excited and focused on the job to keep rehashing old injuries...it’s the easiest thing in the world to forget that things have changed.

_Cuz the best things haven’t._

She’s still his, in a different way. He never stopped being hers. 

And they were always going to end up right where they belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from "Kansas" by Vienna Teng.


End file.
